


Neither Ability Nor Desire

by Gilberrts



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Kinda, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed, more like a slumber party, nightmare trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 14:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13638528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gilberrts/pseuds/Gilberrts
Summary: Jim's doing his best to stay awake as much as possible, and then some. Spock just wants him to get some rest.





	Neither Ability Nor Desire

Many members of many species throughout the galaxy believe in some form of afterlife. Many do not. Jim has always belonged to the latter group. Still, it is one thing to believe that there is nothing after death, it's quite another to experience it firsthand.

It wasn't bad, or scary. It was just… nothing. Being dead was just being nowhere. Sometimes, he misses it. That's probably a little strange, he thinks. It's just that he gets so tired of life, sometimes. Of getting so close to death and being pulled back, of being responsible for all the people on his ship, and barely being able to take care of himself. He's tired of remembering all that he's done, of hating himself. It's just that life hurts, and being nowhere didn't hurt at all.

He's not going to kill himself. He's got a starship full of people to protect and a whole universe to explore. Still, he knows he's living on borrowed time. It's not going to be long now, before he dies protecting them.

Well. That's the best case scenario, he goes out sacrificing himself for others, memorable final words, dramatic music in the background, all that jazz. Knowing his luck, it's more likely that he gets shanked by an alien empress on a diplomatic mission because he accidentally made an offensive gesture. Now that sounds like a fitting end for Captain Kirk.

“He died how he lived,” they would say. “Making an ass of himself.”

Jim knows he's being over dramatic, but he's still got four hours before he's supposed to get up and work Alpha shift, so he'll indulge the morbid line of thinking a little bit.

He's already finished all his reports, unfortunately. He hates the tediousness of paperwork, but what's the point of a scientific expedition if no one sends the findings back to Starfleet? He's read his hard copy of The Great Gatsby, an old standby to aid overthinking, for the nth time of the expedition. He's already rearranged his bookshelf three times: by title, pretentiousness, and main themes. He decides to stop feeling sorry for himself and program the ship’s replicators to make rice pudding. He's not hungry at all, but he knows it'll be a challenge to replicate the texture from memory. Maybe he should consult Gaila during the day on how to expand the ship’s menu to include Orion dishes. He's started figuring out how to add cinnamon on top when Spock knocks on the door of their shared bathroom.

“Open up, computer.” That phrase isn't part of the computer’s original database, but Jim decided to expand the ship's vocabulary, just because.

Spock enters the room, and simply raises one eyebrow. Jim looks around himself; he's surrounded by bowls of rice pudding of varying degrees of quality, all missing exactly one spoonful of pudding.

“Sorry for waking you. I’ll try to keep the noise down.” He'd pretty much forgot Spock was in the next room over, and hopes he hadn't disturbed anyone else in this hall.

“I was not sleeping. Nor were you being particularly loud.”

“Then how'd you hear me?”

“Vulcans have amplified hearing.”

“Then I'll stop bothering you and head to the gym. Just give me a second to clean up here.” The pudding tastes pretty good without cinnamon anyways, if he does say so himself. Spock gives him a strange look, but then again, all looks from Spock are strange.

“Captain, you have not been sleeping. On average, you have only achieved three hours of deep sleep every day cycle.” Jim’s gotten pretty good at reading Spock's emotions, and he sounds almost concerned.

“It's not a big deal, Spock. I just don't need that much sleep.”

“Captain, you and I both know that three hours is objectively an inadequate amount of sleep for an adult human. Sleep deprivation will almost certainly affect your ability to make decisions in a crisis, potentially endangering the crew of the Enterprise, Captain.”

Ouch. For someone so supposedly emotionless, Spock really knew how to put Jim on a guilt trip.

“Alright, I'll talk to Bones about going on a nightly sedative in the morning.” A promise he has no intention to make good on. Previous attempts at sleep aids resulted in allergic reactions or unbearable side effects such as overwhelming lethargy or rampant anxiety. He's lying, but Spock doesn't need to know that.

“Captain, I have reason to believe you are being dishonest.”

Well, shit. Attempts to change Spock's mind or appease him were fruitless, so Jim decides to move to his third option: over exaggerated indignation.

“Since when are you my mother?” Jim flops onto the couch, trying to exude an aura of casual dismissal:

Infuriatingly, Spock takes it in stride.

“I was unaware your mother had a monopoly on being concerned for your wellbeing.”

“Christ, Spock, what do you want me to do right now? Bones won't be on shift for another four hours, and I seriously doubt I'll be able to fall asleep in that time.”

“I could nerve pinch you,” he replies. Jim snorts derisively.

“Stop being a dick and eat some pudding.”

Spock takes the proffered bowl with only a slightly skeptical look, which Jim counts as progress. Spock takes a bite and immediately tries not to make a face, with limited success. Jim barely restrains his laughter.

“It leaves... much to be desired.”

“Yeah, Attempt Three kinda tastes like raw flour, low-fat yogurt, and ass. Things only started getting good around Attempt Eight, when I started importing textures from this risotto Uhura programmed a month back.”

“This is Attempt Twelve, the latest. Shit’s good, I promise.” Jim takes a bowl from the center and hands it to Spock, who eyes it much more suspiciously this time. Jim gives his most innocent look, batting his eyelashes for comedic effect. He simply receives an unimpressed eyebrow raise in response.

“Come on, Spock. Would I ever lie to you?” Impossibly, the eyebrow inches ever higher.

“Yes,” he replies, but takes a bite anyways. His eyes widen imperceptibly, the Vulcan equivalent of a spit take.

“So… thoughts?” Jim’s trying to sound nonchalant about feedback, and failing miserably.

“It is overly sweet,” he begins, and Jim groans.

“Of course you would say that, Vulcan food is as bland and unappealing as a twenty first century porno.”

“But not altogether unpleasant,” he continues as though Jim had said nothing. Jim bolts upright.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yes, it is reminiscent of the recipe my mother made for me as a child with an upset stomach. They are… pleasant memories.”

“Same here. I based it off a recipe from a Chicago diner I worked at when I was seventeen. The first job I had and didn't hate. Mostly because the owner pitied me enough to feed me, and partly because I was a damn good waitress.”

Spock's right eyebrow, which Jim mentally calls The Eyebrow, quirks upward. Probably at his use of a feminine form of a noun to refer to himself. Preemptively, Jim shrugs, and The Eyebrow drops.

Christ, Jim thinks to himself, it's weird as hell to have whole nonverbal exchanges with someone other than Bones.

\---

In Spock's mind, he harbors several questions he cannot even approach asking. He knows that while Jim does not sleep, insomnia is not the cause.

In his light meditative state, Spock can hear the normal footfalls of Jim in his room and others walking down the adjacent hallway. They, like the hum of air conditioning and the faint vibrations of the bulkhead, are easy enough to ignore.

The nightly occurrences of bitten-off screams, heavy, stumbling steps, and the unmistakable retching and splattering of fluid regurgitated into their shared toilet? Less so.

Though it is unlike Spock to assume, he makes the assumption that Jim deliberately avoids sleep because of unsettling dreams.

Over the first three months of their exploration mission, Spock had become one of Jim’s closest advisors (or at least the one that bothers Jim the most, as Doctor McCoy so helpfully suggested). And yet, he could not say with any honesty that he understood the captain.

“Captain, as it appears that neither of us has the desire or ability to sleep, I request to remain in your quarters.”

“Sure,” he says, surprised and doing a bad job of hiding it. “I may not be at the top of my game, but I can still beat you at chess.”

“Captain, I believe that in your current state you cannot engage in the strategic maneuvers necessary to defeat a _sehlat_ of average intelligence.”

“Christ, who knew you got so _mean_ at three in the morning?”

“I can, however, suggest the alternative activity of watching a “movie”,” he said, pointedly ignoring Jim's dramatics.

“Color me surprised. I didn't think you would go for something illogical as fictitious entertainment.”

“On the contrary, Captain. Storytelling is one of the defining traits of civilization, preserving history and passing on moral lessons to future generations. It is only logical for that mechanism to evolve over time.”

“Alright, but if we're officially having a slumber party, the least you could do is call me by my name.”

“Of course, Captain.” The ghost of a barely suppressed smirk haunts Spock's placid expression, makes Jim want to smile back. They've built up a repertoire of running gags over their years working together, much to Bones’s chagrin. It just sort of happens, as Spock is the ultimate ‘straight man’ to Jim's ‘talented idiot’ persona. Despite all preconceptions, Spock was pretty good at lightening the atmosphere with deadpan humor masquerading as indifference.

All at once, Jim is grateful for his First Officer’s blunt concern, even if it is misplaced this time. He'll be fine, of course. There's absolutely nothing to worry about, especially not just a few late nights.

Jim pouts instead, before dramatically falling face-first into his mattress. He sinks into it with a wheeze, undoubtedly leaving a Jim-shaped divot. After a moment he sits up and scoots over, patting the space next to him.

“In that case, Mr. Spock,” he grins, turning on the projector that lights the far wall, “how do you feel about some senseless violence?”

———

“What the hell do you want from me?”

“The same as I always have! To stay by your side, so we can take on the world together!”

“It's not safe to be around me, Steph, you know that. You could end up hurt.” The protagonist’s tone is determined, yet an undercurrent of sorrow is present.

“It already hurts that you keep pushing me away.”

“But-”

“Damnit, Al! I love you and I know you still love me, no matter what. As long as that's true, we can look out for each other.”

An intense look passes between the two. It's clear from our protagonist’s expression that she is torn between longing and fear of losing that which is most dear to her. It is easy to pinpoint the exact moment her resolve crumbles, leaving only a young woman hopelessly in love. The two figures come together with choreographed ease, an odd combination of frantic and graceful that works all the same. The rain, which had been previously been held overhead in the dark clouds, comes with all the malicious feeling of a warm summer shower.

“Hey, Spock,” mumbles Jim, “What's logical about this sort of thing anyway?”

Spock has been paying remarkable attention to the movie Jim randomly selected for the past hour. He sits with his back straight against the headboard, legs pointed at a ninety degree angle to his body, hands folded neatly in his lap.

“Monogamous relationships provide an evolutionary advantage to species that consider it the norm, as it lowers infant mortality rates. Intentionally or otherwise, entertainment promotes this concept to insure the continued survival of their kind. A perfectly logical development.” A tenuous claim at best, yet stated with all the authority of one listing the first hundred digits of pi.

Jim laughs, tired and yet looking better than he had all week. That had been a bit of a stretch, even by Jim's standards, Spock supposes.

“Shit, you really are a big ol’ sap.”

Spock declines to answer that, but seeing as the other man has his eyes fixed to the screen, he allows himself a small smile.

It’s not much longer before conversation stops between them, as Jim begins to succumb to fatigue. Though Doctor McCoy might say he looked ‘smug’ that he had managed to curb their captain’s hyperactivity, Spock would more diplomatically describe his own expression as ‘satisfied’. He began to consider how best to convince Jim to lay down and fully fall asleep. After that, he would leave Jim's quarters, as he had no business intruding on his friend’s rest. In the morning, perhaps he could secure some short term medical leave for Jim from the CMO before his shift began. If Spock was the sort of man that did useless things like sighing in a resigned manner, he would have done so. Despite his respect for the man, he did not relish the thought of confronting the notoriously irritable doctor with a request before he had consumed the requisite amount of caffeine to begin work in the medical bay.

This train of thought ended abruptly with Jim, quite literally, falling into his lap. Spock, to his credit, didn't make a noise, though his hands froze in mid air, the only sign of his panic. Jim had apparently fallen asleep sitting up, only to topple over, head and shoulders suddenly resting squarely on Spock’s thighs. Amazingly, he remained completely unconscious throughout the fall.

Spock considers moving Jim for an embarrassingly short time before disregarding the thought. It would defeat the purpose of the past hour to wake the man, he tells himself. Jim needs to rest, he says, justifying himself to a nonexistent jury.

As if in agreement, Jim presses his cheek into the soft fabric of Spock's pajamas, unconsciously making himself comfortable. Even through the barrier of clothes, he radiates contentment. his face is smooth, peaceful despite the dark circles under his eyes. Spock feels an intense relief at the sight, coupled with shame for what he can only call selfishness. Still, his own fatigue, triggered by recent events, overshadows the latter.

He shouldn't be tired, logically. He receives well over the necessary amount of sleep for a Vulcan adult, even taking into account the half-breed nature that his contemporaries were so disgusted by. And yet, his eyelids grow heavy as he stares ahead at the movie. The machinations of his mind grind to a halt in a manner entirely different from his meditative state. Instead of being clear of distractions, Spock can do nothing but fixate on the captain, pliant and comfortable against him.

Although this is almost certainly an inappropriate violation of privacy against a superior officer, Spock is at a loss to say whether or not this is an acceptable level of familiarity at this point in their own friendship. To say he is out of his depth is an understatement. For reference, it had taken him several years and the captain’s temporary death to label his undefined feelings towards Jim as ‘friendship’.

He finds no answers in several minutes of reflection. Of course, when faced with no viable course of action and an ethical quandary, Spock does the logical thing.

Absolutely nothing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I still haven't done the other thing…  
> At least I got this bastard out of Google Docs, where it's been sitting for the past year.


End file.
